I know how much embarrassment hurts, and I love it as a theme because you can keep digging a hole. It's just an endless well, embarrassment.

When I direct my own scripts, it's much easier as it's been in my head for a year already... What I love about this is having an idea and seeing it come to fruition on screen. I would like to direct someone else's script one day, but I might not get round to it before I die - you can't legislate for being hit by a bus!

I've been nominated four times, never won. And the whole world is going, `Why hasn't Winslet won one?' That's why I'm doing it. "Schindler's Bloody List," "The Pianist," Oscars coming out of their ass.

You can just keep getting it worse until you have to pull back and let the audience breathe. But yeah, I really love digging.

A world without any lies at all is not a good world, because it's artless and because there are no white lies, no flattery.

Do this or you’ll burn in hell.

Comedy and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them.